


Spared

by lonerofthepack



Series: Taken 'verse [7]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Broken Bones, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Medical Trauma, Whumptober 2020, broken down, broken trust, forced to bed, shoot the hostage (sorta)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26965711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: written for two Whumptober prompts: I Think I’ve Broken Something: Broken Down | Broken Bones | Broken Trust  and A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: Forced to Bed | Hallucinations |Shoot the Hostage, with a few liberties taken.The wizard— Percy — looks very small, bloodied and curled up tight, with aurors leaning over him.They'd wrestled the man into a quiet room at the Vienna field house — one with a cot and a pitcher and basin to wash up in, a set of hastily sourced fresh clothes, and a promise: to return quickly with a healer. It had been met with a feral wordless snarl that promised nothing but trouble as the immobilizing spells had eased away, but it was law, to say nothing of compassion, not to keep someone tangled up in partial stillness charms for any longer than necessary.The crash was audible from the end of the hallway, signaling their mistake. The window in that room had been small, and higher than easily accessed, but—It wasn’t the window.Part of the Taken Series
Relationships: Original Percival Graves & Original Character(s), Original Percival Graves & Theseus Scamander
Series: Taken 'verse [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951963
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Spared

**Author's Note:**

> I. Frankly, I don't know if this even counts as whump. I mean, I suppose it does, I've hit the prompts, and definitely Percival's not having a fun time of it, but this is practically sappy for how this series has gone so far.
> 
> It is, however, not the end. Don't get too comfortable; this is a clearing in the woods at best.

They'd wrestled the man into a quiet room at the Vienna field house — one with a cot and a pitcher and basin to wash up in, a set of hastily sourced fresh clothes, and a promise: to return quickly with a healer. It had been met with a feral wordless snarl that promised nothing but trouble as the immobilizing spells had eased away, but it was law, to say nothing of compassion, not to keep someone tangled up in partial stillness charms for any longer than necessary. 

It had taken three Confederation aides to manage him with enough power that they could be careful— he had an uncanny sort of knack for wordless, wandless magic that let him twist free, and he wasn’t in any sort of shape to go fleeing down the mountain or into the streets of Vienna. Daneka had already jogged off to fetch a proper healer, leaving Kees and Portia to see to the formalities of announcing themselves — in German, French, and English, since the wizard had yet to offer any hint of which might be most comfortable -- and explaining the process to follow. None of it seemed to have been taken as any particular comfort, had only earned them silence and a wary stare.

They'd been capturing Grindelwald's followers for days, as they were freed or burst from the rubble of the destroyed castle and tried to flee the anti-apparation wards, or apparated in, answering their master's call and found themselves trapped.

This one wasn't familiar, at least not yet; they'd sent for British Senior Auror Scamander as well as the healer for an identification, and hinted that perhaps the auror might bring his brother. The brother had a fair touch with the creatures they'd been pulling out of cages in the foundations of the tower, and he had a patient way with some of the other nameless prisoners who’d been pulled from similar cages—and with no shoes, no wand, and soft formless clothes filthy with stone dust and blood, there wasn't much question that this dark-haired, wild-eyed wizard had been a prisoner of some description. Not when he wore a silver collar gone ugly with Dark magic, and bled so much magic into the air that it was a wonder he could stand at all.

“We will return soon with the healer and a meal. Please feel comfortable to freshen up and change if you wish.”

The crash was audible from the end of the hallway, signaling their mistake. The window in that room had been small, and higher than easily accessed, but—

It wasn’t the window.

It _was_ a diversion.

Kees barely dares to breathe, not with a shard of ceramic hovering within kissing distance of his jugular, keen as a razor — or at least he had to assume it was, since the wizard holding it to his throat was bleeding down his shirt freely.

“Don’t get stupid,” he growls--an American, because of course he was, and walks Kees backwards to the single chair. Kees has a long fraught moment to be heart-stoppingly grateful for the apparent steadiness of the American’s hand, the guiding grip on his shoulder, the short commands: “Step back; six paces. Stop. Chair— sit. _Stay there_. Wand.”

Breathing shallowly, he hands it back, praying. Tries to not to make any faces that might make Portia do— anything, really. She watches him back, eyes flicking from him to his captor, an agony of indecision in her expression, wand wavering.

What a time to remember his father had wanted him to learn occlumency. 

Sparks fly, to the side, fitful and sulky— he flinches before he can help himself. Portia’s ripped out of her hand without a word, and she lurches after it on instinct.

Kees might whimper. It’s hard to say; his eyes follow the wand like an omen of death.

A single barked syllabus pulls Portia up short, not a spell, just the same verbal whip crack a drill sergeant might use.

Is— his neck would sting, if he’d been cut. 

Right?

Kees barely registers sparks out of the corner of his eye— “ _Somnus_.”

Portia slumps, and she’s caught with another wordless flick before she lands on her face, is eased down on her side.

That— that was a three-quarters position — _textbook_ recovery— 

“Who—”

“ _Silencio._ ”

Kees hears the clatter of a wand kicked under the bed over the panic of having his voice taken, feels the wizard’s hand settle on his shoulder again, the press of the wand handle in his shoulder blade awkward but abruptly so, so much better than the point of it at the base of his skull.

The bloody shard of ceramic and the threat of the hand holding it is still at his throat, but with every spun-fine fiber of his being he wants not to think about green lights and not getting last words, wants not to think about the screaming, the stink of rot and piss in the trenches, wants not to think about his daughter, his wife round with another little one, his mother with only him of the five of his brothers left— 

“Up. Steady now.”

There’s a flicker, through the door--he feels the wizard tense and definitely whimpers, can’t help it.

“ _Percy!_ ”

The wizard startles--away from Kees’ neck, thank _Merlin_.

The rest is little more than instinct. To grab at the hand holding a weapon and twist, to follow that twist through until both of them are on the ground. 

He hears a shout, feel magic blaze past his shoulder— that devilish little shard of ceramic goes skittering out of bloodied fingers. He goes for the wand, knocks it away as well before he realizes that the body under his isn’t exactly fighting him— is curling around the injured limb and tucking tight against blows to head or belly. 

The wand’s skittered out of reach as well.

He scrambles up and back — away. Putting as much space between them as possible, out of the aurors’ way, and further still, ‘til his shoulders hit the wall and his knees threaten to drop him.

The wizard— Percy — looks very small, bloodied and curled up tight, with aurors leaning over him, with Theseus Scamander muttering fast and loose, hands hovering.

He is, they tell him later, lucky to be alive. The wizard, Percy, is Percival Graves, former Head of the American DMLE, missing three years now and presumed quite dead. In his prime, he was known as a fearsome duelist.

In his prime, Kees thinks, and contemplates if he should take the leave he's been offered, since there's a curious anger somewhere in him, at the idea that the Director's prime days are done, or that he's any less a duelist. It strikes him: a man that can disarm two trained aids, and can do it without significantly harming anyone but himself is far from a _poor_ duelist, injured or no. Something of that wanders around his own pride, still too shaken to be properly stung, and settles more firmly in offense on behalf of the Director. Perhaps that's not precisely what was said, but there's an ugliness to the implication that Percival Graves' life or prowess is finished— while the man's blood still stains his shirt and his throat is conspicuously uncut, by the grace and steadiness of Graves’ hands.

He’s broken the Director’s wrist, and at least one finger. Shattered two ribs that had been cracked when the building came down, cracked three more. They aren’t entirely certain if the man’s got a concussion; one of the Scamanders or possibly the Healer had apparently hit him with quite a stunner as well, and it could be effects of that are lingering. 

It earns him a commendation from his Confederation superior — not for the injuries, of course, but for acting so swiftly in such a dangerous situation, for averting tragedy. The Dir— Percival Graves is highly trained, he’s told, and they don’t know how volatile he might actually be, not now that he’s taken a hostage and attacked an aid worker directly.

It rings a little hollow— if Kees enjoyed hurting people, there were very different branches of the International Confederation he might have joined instead, and well, it’s hard to ignore how badly Graves has been hurt, subjected to ‘swift action’. 

But whatever else — he gets to bury his face in his daughter’s mouse-brown hair that evening, gets to shower kisses on his Lara’s smile-lined face, gets to take Mama a fresh loaf of bread and sit with her for tea.

  
  


It is possible that he’s managed to shatter the D— Percival Graves-- entirely.

It’s easy to think of him as the Director, Kees finds— he needs only think of stern commands in raspy English and Portia laid in a rescue position without a second’s hesitation — though the title apparently makes the man go ghost white when others have called him by it.

Most of his names or titles or nicknames do, it seems.

He isn’t assigned to Graves, of course, not by any means, but he’s got ears. Portia’s fine, didn’t even have bruises— Kees’ are practically self-inflicted, knees, and where he caught up hard against the table that had held the pitcher and basin. 

But Graves seems…

He’s on bedrest, of course — wrapped and plastered, and of course Grindelwald hadn’t exactly been feeding him well, so whatever burst of adrenaline-fueled strength he’d spent on his doomed escape attempt had been the last of it. The wards on the bed couldn’t have held him otherwise, not with the sort of control he’d displayed with two strange wands in the span of two minutes.

 _Two_ , Kees thinks, sometimes, and has to pause lest he drop something. Only two, and with another two, Graves could have stunned or somnus’d him and been half a dozen apparation points away, hemorrhaging magic or no. 

There’s talk of Skele-gro, of a curse-breaker, of bringing specialists to manage whatever Dark thing it was that flayed magic from his core and the the cores of the other rescued wizards like fat from a cut of brisket, dangling by a tenuous thread.

He’s a quiet patient, apparently. Unresisting, now that he’s been subdued. They’re reasonably sure he has hallucinations — he mutters sometimes, and flinches at random as well as at any hint that he might be touched. His fellow ex-captives do as well; he’s the quietest, no screams in the night or lengthy gibbering. 

But he doesn’t answer questions, doesn’t look at the aurors who ask them, not the way the others do. Not even Theseus Scamander, who sits with him sometimes and tries, pleading on the love of brotherhood forged in the trenches.

"He is angry?" Kees asks once, and gets an offhand shrug. The whole mess of Grindelwald's court will be transferred in various directions soon; it hardly pays to be too invested, when they're only in Vienna for first aid and processing. The aurors and the courts will manage the rest of that disaster.

He doesn’t quite know why he digs out his grandfather’s wand. Manticore’s mane, and yew, and some sort of polished bone in the handle that tingles in his hand. It isn’t a wand he can use — yew’s a picky sort of wood, and manticore wants a trickiness that Kees doesn’t desire for himself. Opa Nikolaas had been a strange bird — had preferred his boats to land, and stories of piracy had only rung half true to his grandbabies giggles until Opa was gone nearly two decades and Papa had found letters of marque sealed with the lions of the King and had had to sit down hard.

It’s his day off; he dresses in his work robes anyway, kisses Lara on the cheek and says he’ll be just an hour; an errand, only.

It’s half-past the hour when he slips into the supplies closet, scoops up what’s needed for a bandage change and adds it to the lunch tray.

Percival Graves doesn’t exactly look at him when he shoulders open the door and shoulders it closed behind him. The existing lunch tray is barely touched, set away on the table; both hands bandaged thickly and limp on the blankets.

The pitcher and basin — not that the man can get up to get at them — are copper now, and small enough that they’re far more likely to bounce than bruise.

He sets down the second tray beside the first, and lifts the chart. The bandages are excessive — the bones are brittle with healing still, and the cut from the pottery is still an achingly new scar, but he hardly needs the support of that sort of swaddling.

“If it’s all the same to you, if you’re here to repay the favor, I prefer to stand for a beating.”

“How are the ribs?” Kees asks without looking up, frowning at the note that said he’d refused a pain potion for three days now. The magic still drips, but someone’s figured out how to stitch it enough that he’s hardly drowning in it any longer, his magical core not pumping it out into the dirt as fast as he builds it.

“Sore. Why?” 

“Because you will only have ten minutes when I drop the wards. I think that perhaps you will want not to waste them,” Kees said, and gave an impatient wave for the closer of his hands to start taking away the glove of bandaging with a huff for the waste, for the mild cruelty of it. “And I promised my wife I would only be out for an hour. The little one want to go to the zoo this afternoon.” 

“What do you imagine I can tell you, that you’re pretending you’ll drop the wards?”

“What do I care about what you might say?”

“Generally,” the Director said, carefully. “This sort of thing only goes two ways.”

Kees just hummed, rewrapping the last of the bandage in a light covering, to protect the fragile skin, and gestured for the other.

“Either you’re here to get me to talk to you, or you’re here to hurt me. Which is it?”

“Not either of those, Mr. Graves. Ahh— who wrapped these? Awful. There, better. Too tight?”

“No.”

“Make a fist, eh? Good, much better. The magieloos--the muggles, you call them— they have to splint broken fingers, you know.”

“Get to the point.”

“We do not splint broken fingers, there’s magic, yes? But there is no magic for broken trust, you see, and we did not do quite so well with that. So.”

He drew Opa Nikolaas’s yew and manticore wand, set it on the blankets before the Director’s startled gaze. “The wards have to come down before you can try, but perhaps it will suit, eh?”

“What happens to you, if I go?”

“To me?” Kees asked. “Not so much. I am taking leave, yes? For nerves, perhaps. And my wife’s time is soon, so it is just as well, to get the nursery ready.”

“And you won’t ask, what I might do?”

“Why should I know anything about it, Mr. Graves? I am not on duty today — I have only come in to work to accept the leave my Director has offered to me, and you are not my patient to mind.” He grimaced again over the bandages. “Besides. My neck thanks the steadiness of your hands and my babies have a Papa, still. That is worth something, eh?”

He stood to pull clean clothes out of the closet, and the little slippers they offered their guests. Tossed a bit of transfiguration around, to get something a bit more sturdy. “You will have to forgive the coat, I am afraid — I can only ever make them green. But warm.”

“If you’re in earnest,” the Director said, low and choked, “if this isn’t a trap, I don’t know how I’ll ever repay it.”

“Ahh, no. This is for those fingers, hmm? And the ribs. And maybe this will teach us to mind our arrogance, to think that we have always the upper hand because we wear the Confederations colors.” 

Percival Graves disappears and the aid station loses its collective mind.

Kees paints the nursery a soft green, with his daughter clinging to his legs and Lara trying to scold them both for wearing more of the paint than the walls, and failing, for laughing too hard.

He reappears, six days later, haggard and staggering and no less wild-eyed than the first time he’d arrived on their doorstep, but he doesn’t flinch when Theseus Scamander catches him close and shoves a shoulder under his in support, only winces for the tug of displeased ribs.

He won’t answer questions, not about the wand he carried, nor about the wand he throws at Albus Dumbledore’s feet like a challenge. Won’t say how he left, only that he doesn’t intend to again, and doesn’t hesitate to let the curse-breakers look at the scarring wound to his magical core for the first time. The collar he'd arrived in the first time is off -- he hands it over, broken in a dozen pieces and wrapped in a handkerchief and seems instantly lighter for it.

Kees exclaims as he’s meant to when pub night rolls around and the story comes out with all the attendant hand waving, and takes the drink they buy him for _his_ troubles with the American maniac with a good-natured word of thanks, takes his turn with buying a round for their troubles as well.

A month later, Nikolaas Parzival van Hoorn burbles in his Papa’s arms, bright-eyed and smiling no matter what the healer says, three days old and sporting a wispy mop of his Lara’s ashy blond and utterly perfect. He'll grow up on stories of wild-eyed men who carried a yew wand, a pirate who loved his boats and a duelist who defeated the darkest wizard of their time.

"How'd he beat him, Papa?" he'll ask, bright-eyed and burbling still, "Did he kill him?"

"No, no," Kees will disagree, and swoop up his little ones, not so little by then perhaps, but always his. "Or perhaps he did, but you beat the darkness by living, my little man, not by killing."


End file.
